The Armory Show Centennial Celebrations

"On the evening of February 17, 1913, with four thousand guests milling around in the eighteen improvised rooms within the shell of the 69th. Regiment Armory, the International Exhibition of Modern Art, more familiarly known as the Armory Show, was formally opened to the public. This sensational exhibition, which included examples of the most advanced movements in European art, was the first of its kind held in the United States and was the result of more than a year's planning and organization by a small group of artists, the Association of American Painters and Sculptors...
Few of those who crowded the octagonal-shaped rooms formed by a network of burlap-covered panels could have any inkling of the impact that this event would have upon the future of American art...
The idea of the Armory Show had taken a long time to mature. Its earliest glimmers go back to late 1911, and in some ways even beyond, with the meeting of four young artists--Jerome Myers, Elmer MacRae, Walt Kuhn and Henry Fitch Taylor. What is clear is that these four talked about the problems of the American artist, about the difficulties of showing their work either within or outside the framework of the Academy, about forming an organization through which they might work to improve exhibition conditions, and also about the general problem of getting American art out of its rut."